Changes in biological diversity in time and space

Global biodiversity change is accelerating in the Anthropocene. The magnitude and speed of recent change needs to be placed in historical context, however, if we are to understand the long term impacts and work out how best to maintain biodiversity in a changing world. This studentship provides an exciting opportunity to bring together information on biodiversity change from the ice ages (the Pleistocene epoch) with the more familiar changes that have taken place in recent decades and centuries. In this PhD project, you will test whether rapid environmental change (in the past and recently) increases or erodes different aspects of diversity. In particular, you will develop biodiversity ‘hockey-stick’ graphs to identify how human-caused changes differ from those in the past.

The increasing availability of modern-day and fossil databases provides a novel opportunity to generate an increasingly coherent ‘story of diversity change’ over the last three million years. You will mainly work on existing data (e.g., fossil and Biological Records databases), but will have the opportunity to undertake some fieldwork to ‘ground truth’ determinants of present-day diversity. The project will investigate the gains and losses (turnover) of plants and animals over time, quantifying how these changes generate geographic patterns of diversity. Focal study regions will include GB, New Zealand, California, Europe and North America. The research will concentrate on forest trees and other plants, mammals, and potentially snails and beetles, for which the fossil record is relatively good.

The project will suit a student who wishes to understand the impacts of humanity of the Earth’s biodiversity, who is comfortable analysing large databases, and who is also prepared for fieldwork. You should be objective, numerical, wish to combine historical and present-day perspectives, and excited about developing and answering fundamental scientific questions. You will be based at the University of York, where you will be supervised by ecological and evolutionary biologist Professor Chris Thomas FRS. You will be co-supervised by
palaeobiologist Professor Richard Bradshaw from the University of Liverpool and Dr Nick Isaac from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. You will develop an understanding of global change, the fossil record, ecology, and advanced statistical analysis. The project is part of the NERC ACCE PhD programme, which will provide additional support and training.